GOP legislates white privilege/minority persecution, in plain sight: WAPO

[lindysalsagal]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-gop-is-quietly-crafting-work-requirement-waivers--for-white-people/2018/05/16/fcef4eb8-5928-11e8-8836-a4a123c359ab_story.html?utm_term=.6c38399a25c5

The GOP is quietly crafting work requirement waivers — for white people

ortez/AP)

By Christine Emba Columnist May 16 at 8:10 PM Email the author
In January, the Trump administration released new guidelines that would allow states to begin imposing work requirements on Medicaid recipients. It was a kindness, really: According to Seema Verma, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, meaningful work is essential to “economic self-sufficiency, self-esteem, wellbeing and . . . health.”

Well, for some of us.

Since the announcement, states have raced to implement new work requirements, which will have the effect of bumping hundreds of thousands of their poorest citizens off the Medicaid rolls. But in more recent months, a number of GOP-controlled states have been quietly crafting waivers that would end up shielding rural, white residents from this new scheme for self-esteem.

It seems an unusually transparent move, even for a party that tends toward the blatant in its disdain for those not seen as “real Americans.” But most of all, it’s an example of how much-touted moral policy stances — such as solicitude for the “dignity of work,” or “zero tolerance” for drugs, or “extreme” immigration vetting — often give shelter to less attractive tribal loyalties.

In Ohio, Michigan and Kentucky, work-requirement waivers would include exemptions for counties with the highest levels of unemployment, which are overwhelmingly white, rural — and GOP-leaning. But most of these exemptions would do nothing to help people of color who live in high-unemployment urban areas, because they live in places where countywide unemployment numbers are skewed by the inclusion of wealthy suburbs.

More at link, more disgusting that I can believe. Let 'em starve. That's so "pro-life" of them.

[Cha]

1. And, anti-choice.

Mahalo, lindy

[oberliner]

2. "shielding rural, white residents from this new scheme"

White about rural, non-white residents?

[mr_lebowski]

3. Well, they get to go along for the ride, presumably ... what about it is confusing for you, OBL?(nt)

[oberliner]

6. Why do they say "shielding rural, white residents..." ?

Instead of say: "shielding rural residents, the majority of whom are white..."

By writing: "shielding rural, white residents..." the implication is that "rural, non-white residents" aren't shielded.

[BumRushDaShow]

7. Of late, many of the "non-white" rural residents have been immigrants

who are now being deported.

[oberliner]

8. Presumably there are Black rural residents in these states also

[BumRushDaShow]

10. And there are white urban residents in those states as well

But the issue is who would suffer the greatest "disparate impact" to these policies.

[oberliner]

11. Exactly

I think the article could have made that point most effectively without the sentence that I highlighted which makes a further implication that I feel is unwarranted.

[BumRushDaShow]

12. Here is an article that summarizes the issue and stats (at least in Michigan)

<...>

The proposal would exempt people living in counties where the unemployment rate tops 8.5 percent, a provision GOP lawmakers say is aimed at protecting those living in areas where job opportunities are scarce.

Medicaid enrollment data provided to The Washington Post by the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services shows that this exemption would overwhelmingly benefit white people while leaving the work requirements in place for all but a sliver of the affected African American population.

Without the exemption, the work requirements are projected to apply primarily to approximately 700,000 Michigan residents enrolled in Medicaid under broader eligibility rules passed under Gov. Rick Snyder (R).

African Americans make up about 23 percent of that population, but they would make up only 1.2 percent of the people eligible for the unemployment exemption. White people make up 57 percent of the total potential affected population, but they make up 85 percent of the group eligible for the unemployment exemption, according to an analysis of the state's data.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/05/11/michigans-gop-has-a-plan-to-shield-some-people-from-medicaid-work-requirements-theyre-overwhelmingly-white/?utm_term=.54941c684b68

[uponit7771]

9. Does the article explicitly have to say the word mostly? There's not enough evidence from this admin

... they don't value non white Americans?

thx in advance

[safeinOhio]

4. I'm calling for a mass migration

from Detroit to Oakland County in Michigan in order to get Medicaid. Then stand back and see how fast this law is changed.

[pnwmom]

5. It costs too much for most Medicaid people to move. n/t

[KY_EnviroGuy]

13. That is a huge issue and the GOP is in denial.

One of the GOP's never-ending free market principles is that if people live in an area where work is hard to find, they should move to another area or state where the jobs are - as if these broken people have hundreds of dollars in free cash to move their families. It also assumes they have a reliable car to drive. And, that might be to take a minimum wage job. If that didn't work out, just uproot your family and move again, they would say.

These people are mentally ill and should be put away where they can no longer hurt working people, immigrants, those with disabilities, the elderly and the poor. We now have a government loaded with psychopaths.

[EffieBlack]

14. They're not in denial

They know exactly what they’re doing.